The Awareness of Fake News Among Millennials in Brunei Darussalam: New and Traditional Media
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35307/saltel.v9i2.189Keywords:
Fake News, Millennials, Brunei Darussalam, D igital LiteracyAbstract
Fake news is one of the issues that present itself in this digital era. The existence of traditional media is monitored locally, where new media offers unfiltered information. The challenges that the news consumer would face were in question as if they would be able to differentiate fake news among the real news that they encounter. The objective of this study is to understand and to explore how fake news can affect the public, particularly the millennials in Brunei Darussalam while exploring how fake news are being identified in relation to media literacy. News platform preferences were also gathered. From the semi-structured, one-on-one interviews done with six participants comprises millennials in Brunei Darussalam uncovers that fake news is often being described as unverified news that are designed to mislead the receiver, often featuring exaggerated contents. Participants showcase news verification habits by either crosschecking the content with reliable sources or through inquiring the subject of the news itself. New media in the form of social media is highly being preferred as the participants’ source of news. Traditional media are being less preferred due to the time and financial factors that the platform offer. The participants also raised concerns regarding receiving news in the digital landscape where the uncertainties towards AI-generated contents, questionable accuracy, rapid news traction being the leading themes. The findings highlight having prior experience with fake news will contribute to the increase digital literacy skills where it will influence the verification habits by the participants.
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